A recent study provides insight into the contributing factors behind nightmare distress. Findings suggest that individuals with heightened emotional reactivity — or neuroticism — experience more frequent nightmares and more nightmare distress. The study was published in Sleep Science.
Although nightmares are fairly common in the general population, a clinical diagnosis of nightmare disorder is only met when nightmares are accompanied by a significant degree of distress. The International Classification of Sleep Disorders – Third Edition describes different ways that nightmares can affect the daily lives of dreamers. These include nightmare flashbacks during waking hours, fear of falling asleep due to the anticipation of nightmares, and mood disturbances due to lingering feelings from nightmares.
To explore what might be contributing to this distress, researchers looked at several factors. “The aim of this study,” the authors explain, “was to examine the contribution of socio-demographic variables, nightmare frequency, and neuroticism to global nightmare distress.”
An online survey was completed by 2,492 men and women between the ages of 17 to 93. Participants filled out a portion of the Mannheim Dream questionnaire to assess their nightmare distress and nightmare frequency, both currently and in childhood. The definition of a nightmare that was provided to subjects was as follows: “Nightmares are dreams with strong negative emotions that result in awakening from the dreams. The dream plot can be recalled very vividly upon awakening.”
A German version of the NEO-Five-Factor Inventory: the 30-Item-Short-Version was used to measure the five personality factors of neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness.
Results showed that around 9% of respondents reported current weekly nightmares and 18% reported weekly nightmares in childhood. More than a quarter (27%) of participants who experienced nightmares reported recurring nightmares that related to events from their waking lives.
Neuroticism was the personality trait most strongly associated with both the frequency of nightmares and the experience of recurrent nightmares, although openness to experience and conscientiousness did show small correlations. Women reported more frequent nightmares than men and also more nightmare distress. However, the gender effect for frequency of nightmares was no longer significant when researchers controlled for neuroticism. The authors explain that this is in line with previous research suggesting that “neuroticism is a factor that at least partly explains gender differences in nightmare frequency.”
An age effect was also found, showing that higher age was correlated with more recurrent nightmares and also more nightmare distress. The researchers offer a possible explanation for this, noting previous findings that show that elderly who lived through World War II report a higher frequency of war-related dreams.
The authors share the limitation that their recruitment process may have led to selection bias, where those who were more interested in dreams may have opted to participate in the study. The prevalence of nightmares reported by participants in this study was indeed high when compared to previous representative samples.
Nevertheless, researchers conclude that in addition to nightmare frequency, factors such as gender, age, and neuroticism likely contribute to nightmare distress. They suggest that future studies use diagnostic interviews to assess the presence of nightmare disorder and explore variables associated with the diagnosis.
The study, “Nightmare frequency and nightmare distress: Socio-demographic and personality factors”, was authored by Michael Schredl and Anja S. Goeritz.
(Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay)